RESTORING RAGUSA.

Dubrovnik, one of the jewels of the Mediterranean world, suffered greatly in the Balkan wars: important buildings were destroyed and much else was damaged. International aid has restored a lot of the city, but work continues.

From the shade of a cafe, surveying the sun-washed columns of a Baroque cathedral of Portmeirion proportions, Dubrovnik seems to be an ideal city. People -- not cars, not scooters, not buses -- pass with their shopping baskets and briefcases. Three- and four-storey houses line the angled exits of intimate squares. On the ground floor, business is conducted. On the upper levels, domestic life takes place behind the slats of hinged shutters. Compared with this bastion-ringed grid of regular streets and irregular squares, conventional pedestrian malls and zoning are a banal imitation. Set on a rocky headland of the Southern Adriatic, the city of Dubrovnik presents a bulky carapace of freestone wall on bare rock to the open sea. On the land side, a generous flagged quay runs round a sheltered harbour. Decked with Gothic windows, Renaissance loggias and Baroque stairways, the city's public spaces emulate the comfortable stride and swagger of Shakespeare's stage Italy.

The heart of the city, and a measure of its breadth, is the Stradun, a long, tapering lane. It opens to piazzas at its top and bottom, and is purpose designed for the evening passeggiala. You can saunter along it in 10 minutes, gate to gate. Access has not altered since the fourteenth century, when the maritime republic, then known as Ragusa, completed its two land gates, with barbicans, and two sea gates feeding the harbour. A monastery serves each road in, creating a cool oasis of green cloister at either extremity of the city. At the eastern end are the Dominicans, to the west the Franciscans, who since 1317 have been pounding herbs in one of the oldest pharmacies in Europe.

From the corniche coast road, high on the cliff above, the scale and character of Dubrovnik is fully revealed. Walls, streets and houses are built almost entirely of a uniform bone-white limestone. Colour is added by the equally homogenous covering of orange roof tiles, and the surrounding arc of sapphire sea, which tightly hems in the city's compact form. Such an ensemble could not fail to elicit delight. G. B. Shaw called it 'an earthly paradise'; Jules Romains spoke of the 'inexhaustible charm' of its wall walk. Nor could it fail to have been put on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Yet on 1 October 1991, this city among cities, which the civilized world held so precious, and which was of no modern military value, came suddenly and without warning under artillery shelling, air attack and naval bombardment from Yugoslav Federal forces. The attacks continued until 20 July 1992. The orange roof tiles shattered under the high-explosive shells, exposing the 300 year old beams. These were set ablaze by incendiaries. Both the Franciscan and the Dominican monasteries were damaged. Renaissance palaces were gutted, Baroque steps scarred with shrapnel, the delicate stone fountain on Gundulic square was dismembered, the limestone dome of the great fountain of Onofrius was pierced. Statues, balustrades, cornices and lintels were chipped or punched with holes. The Franciscan monastery library was hit by guided missiles.

Dubrovnik had suffered before. In 1667, an earthquake left most of it in ruins. Another struck in 1979. As a result of this more recent disaster an Institute for Restoration was created, which now took on another challenge: reversing the effects of twentieth-century warfare. According to director, Dubravka Zvrko, 70 per cent of the buildings in the Old Town had been damaged in some way. Most of the roofs were in need of repair, nine palaces had been burnt out. State funds could not be expected to cover the huge costs, but fortunately Dubrovnik had generous and sympathetic friends overseas. Famous individuals generated publicity and a fund-raising concert was held in the Albert Hall by the London-based International Trust for Croatian Monuments. In the United States a Rebuild Dubrovnik fund was launched and in Germany, artists and citizens of Dusseldorf founded the Kunstler helfen Dubrovnik, Dusseldorfer helfen Dubrovnik. A similar organization was set up in France, promoted by the mayor of Rueil-Malmaison, D ubrovnik's twin town.

The task of the restorers was not merely a question of widespread and extensive repair, but also of maintaining quality in materials and workmanship on precious historic buildings, most of which date back to the seventeenth century. A major setback to the quest for authenticity was that much of the fine detail, such as statues, facade ornamentation, the characteristic stone guttering and the many medallions of St Blaise, patron of the city, had been chiselled from stone quarries on the island of Korcula, which were now too small and ill-equipped to cope with the sudden huge demand. Here a compromise had to be accepted, whereby the most obviously visible elements are being repaired with the rarer Korcula stone, while the guttering, familiar only to pigeons, is supplied from the large commercial quarries of the island of Brac. Locals are also disturbed that the dull mottled tone of the old roof tiles has mostly been replaced by identical bright orange new ones. Exceptions are being made on historically signifi cant buildings, where new but variegated and 'weathered' tiles are used. Masons, sculptors, carpenters and painters have both been recruited locally and lent by those countries donating aid as a contribution in kind. Two thirds of the repair work has now been completed, but the visitor still comes across workshops of medieval aspect (except for the coffee-pot and radio), in cavernous stone cellars, where details are finished. A series of postcards published by UNESCO showing 'before and after' views of restoration to damaged areas of masonry, carvings and roofs forms an imaginative and fund-raising celebration of the work to date.

In its Ragusan heyday Dubrovnik earned its living by sea-borne trade, ship construction and from the charter of crews and vessels. (The date, size, intention and fate of the Spanish Armada may be familiar to every British schoolchild, but it is less well known that a quarter of the major vessels were supplied by a subcontractor called Ragusa.) In the twenty-first century, the only hope for the city to survive economically and to finish the vital work of restoration and maintenance of the building fabric is tourism. To this end the community possesses many advantages: pedestrianized streets, magnificent monuments and a picturesque harbour with boat excursions to the environs, including the green island of Lokrum where Richard the Lion Heart is said to have found shelter. Cafe's and restaurants are well established and there is an exceptional absence of beggars and graffiti. There is also an apparent lack of aggressive threat or crime, as there are only two exits to the city, both barred to traffic.

In the summers before the war, the city was packed, with police having to slow the entry of the crowds. Last spring, when the sunny, mild climate is at its most inviting, the streets were nearly empty, the cafes patronized only by locals, except for those brief hours when cruise ships moored offshore. Traffic levels are the lowest for years, the heaviest being the lorries of UN and NATO forces, en route to Bosnia and Kosovo. Restaurants are full of hopeful waiters beckoning and bowing. A short drive along the Magistrale, the Dalmatian corniche road, is Gavtat, the Croatian St Tropez, but the foreign visitors here are now mostly troops on R&R breaks.

The best introduction to the city is the circuit of its walls, for which a small charge is now levied. The route includes stiff climbs up to bastions and weaves around the crests of buildings along the harbour, past breezy gun platforms overlooking Adriatic-washed rocks on one side and tiny, overgrown gardens on the other. Yet in its gentle, humane urbanism, this historic city still offers lessons for the future. For advocates of a balanced and mixed-use built environment, for planners of an ecologically enlightened car-free future, for those who would revive a shared communal life in high-density but health housing, Dubrovnik is an enviable model.